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What it is : The Rosette Nebula
Where it is:5,000 light - years away , in the constellation Monoceros , the unicorn .
Cradled within the fiery petals of the Rosette Nebula is NGC 2244, the young star cluster it nurtured.
When it was shared : Oct. 1 , 2024
Why it ’s so special : The Rosette Nebula is a self-aggrandizing deal . At about 130 light - years across , it ’s just about five time the size of it ofthe Orion Nebula — the close wizard - imprint region to Earth — and about four times farther away , according to the National Science Foundation’sNOIRLab . It contains a mass of gas and dust . If that sound dull , intend again — just look at this striking picture from the Dark Energy Camera ( DECam ) in Chile .
Those sparkling colour are due to the ultraviolet radiation syndrome produced by the nebula ’s massive stars . That radiation ionizes ( electrically charges ) the surround hydrogen gas pedal . In this look-alike of the nebula , you could see shades of jaundiced and gold ( ionise O ) , ruddy ( ionized hydrogen ) and pink ( ionized Si ) .
An uncropped version of the image.
Related:38 jaw - dropping James Webb Space Telescope images
At the heart of the 377 - megapixel picture is NGC 2244 , a bluish clump of untested , massive stars that has sculpted and illuminated a large bodily cavity within the surrounding gas . NGC 2244 is about 2 million years erstwhile — an babe , in cosmic term — and formed after the nebula ’s gases coalesced into clumps brought together by their reciprocal gravity . They give the Rosette Nebula its glowing " eye . "
If you look closely at the key void , you ’ll see " elephant trunk , " or column of junk that check the transition from the ionized atomic number 1 near the red-hot , untested whiz to the cooler H beyond . They ’re in trunk - like shapes because , as the shell - corresponding vacuum expands beyond the star cluster , the clumps of cooler natural gas resist .
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We ’re seeing this " cosmic rose " at just the right time — within about 10 million long time , the radiation from the hot , immature star of the cluster will have dissipated the nebula .
The image — also useable as azoomableversion — was publish to mark the 5th anniversary of NOIRLab , the U.S. internal substance for land - found , nighttime optical and infrared uranology . It was have using the 570 - megapixel DECam , which is climb on the Víctor M. Blanco 4 - metre Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter - American Observatory in the southerly Atacama Desert in Chile .
For more sublime space images , check out out ourSpace Photo of the Week archive .
